RUSSELL JOSLIN: Alone Forever Sometimes

As the title itself evokes, Russell Joslin’s Alone Forever Sometimes describes—in 58 rich, striking black and white plates—both the inherent isolation and collective relief of being. Using himself as a means of expressing the individual emotional state, Joslin’s self-portraits strike chords of truth so deeply conveyed—and thus experienced—that the personal becomes universal, relating to the human condition with conflict and resolution co-existing as man versus nature, man versus man, man versus himself . . . and achieving peace, however fleeting.

Alone Forever Sometimes is a rarity in contemporary photography: Formally luscious, deliberate, and analog; conceptually powerful without the necessity of description or script. Here, the images whisper, suggest, creep, and confront. With an aesthetic that channels the unconscious, the subconscious, lucid moments, and the realm of dreams, Joslin’s work is haunting the way our memories are. Is the work surrealist? Is it nouveau in a photographic palette of vines, grasses, and leaves? Is it masculine, is it feminine, is it self-contained? Is it plucked from Joslin’s memory, or your own? Is it soothing, is it disruptive? The answer is: Yes.

REVIEWS:

Awarded Gold/Fine Art Book - Moscow International Foto Awards

Od Review｜Lenscratch｜Musée｜Interview: Analog Forever

“Russell Joslin’s photographs, when put in a sequence from frame to frame, remind us of an underground movie, which bizarre scenario has many layers of meaning. The subtleties of his ideas endowed with the poverty of the means make the imagination work so much more effectively. The visual plasticity of photography allows not only the encoding of archetypal ideas but also the creation of an aura filled with the powerful emanation of human presence. And Russell’s presence is indeed powerful.” —Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin, from the essay in Alone Forever Sometimes

“Filled with stunning tenderness and whimsy, Russell Joslin’s first monograph of self-portraits, Alone Forever Sometimes, is a dead serious and creepy journey into the Alone part that is in us all. Joslin throws himself in and out of wild landscapes that come from within our deep and very human feelings of longing and love. We are Alone, but not always. . . .” —Nancy Rexroth

“Each image is like a poem, something to savor.” —Janieta Eyre

“Spirit, distress, melancholy, kindness, and wonder layer the photographs within the book’s modest exterior with much tension and drama.” —Collier Brown, Od Review

“We are our head, we are our mind, we are our imagination. Russell Joslin's Alone Forever Sometimes presents that philosophical premise stunningly, advancing the continuum from Hippolyte Bayard to F. Holland Day to Ralph Eugene Meatyard and on to Samaras, Woodman, Sherman, and Coplans, expanding once again the territory of our struggling souls wrestling down life's tremors and wonders.” —Arno Rafael Minkkinen

“A lonely man bumps into glass walls. His round, bald head is a strange planet, a bud of flesh taking its place among the thistles. Alone Forever Sometimes is a study of oneself, a search for inner peace, a drive for life, an exorcism.” —Fabien Ribery, L’intervalle

“Russell Joslin is the Johnny Cash of the photography world—tall, chronically dressed in black, and bearing a talent that is undeniable.” —Aline Smithson, Lenscratch

“The photographs leave readers feeling as deserted and protuberant as Joslin appears in them. His features are ambiguous throughout, his face concealed in clothing or in blur, washed out by white light. Here, he is not Russell Joslin. Rather, he is every person who flips through the photographs, somehow finding familiarity in their strangeness.” —Salma Elazab, Musée

“Russell Joslin has fine-tuned his visual language so well that we can savor it, we are seduced by it, and we want to understand it. His black and white images are silver gelatin prints shot on film—their exquisite clarity make his mastery of craft apparent. . . . If Joslin’s language is photography, he commands it with compelling eloquence.” —EYEMAZING

RUSSELL JOSLIN has worked primarily in photography since the early 90s. His work has been internationally published and exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Additionally, he was the sole Owner, Editor & Publisher of the independent photography journal Shots from 2000-2017, which demonstrated and cultivated his distinct editing style that places special emphasis on sequencing and narrative tone. In 2018, he founded his new publishing company, Skeleton Key Press, and relocated from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Oslo, Norway. He has authored two books as editor: Black Forest (Candela Books, 2014) and Series of Dreams (SKP, 2018). Alone Forever Sometimes is his first monograph.

RIMMA GERLOVINA and VALERIY GERLOVIN, Russian born American artists, are the authors of the books Russian Samizdat Art, Concepts, and Thought of Thoughts. Their work is represented in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Tate Gallery, London; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; The Guggenheim and International Center of Photography, New York; and many others. Their works have been featured in numerous books and magazines, and on the covers of Art on the Edge and Over, The New York Times Magazine, Zoom, and The Sciences.

Published by Skeleton Key Press, November 2019
ISBN 978-0-9997553-2-7
21 x 29.7 cm (8.3 x 11.7 in)
Hardbound, paper wrapped, foil stamped, 88 pages
Edited and designed by Russell Joslin
Essay by Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin
Introduction by Russell Joslin

First Edition limited to 350 copies, signed and numbered by the artist